Widespread murder, rape and looting were committed during the Blitz, which began 70 years ago this week
IN THE history books of the Blitz, which began 70 years ago this week and killed 40,000 people before its end, Londoners bravely withstood the might of Hitler’s Luftwaffe, sheltering by night in Tube stations and returning daily to their homes and factories, or what was left of them.
On Tuesday, 2,500 survivors of that time gathered in St Paul’s Cathedral – whose dome, wreathed in the dust from explosions, became the iconic image of the bombings – for a memorial service that ended with the sound most closely associated with the time: the air-raid siren.
There is, however, another, less glorious side to the Blitz: the murder, rape and looting committed under the cover of darkness offered by the blackout, and increasingly sophisticated attempts to exploit war-time bureaucracy to make fraudulent claims.
Harry Dobkin’s story is one. He had married Rachel Dubinski in 1920 and separated three years later, though Dobkin subsequently served a number of prison terms for failing to pay maintenance.
Realising that the police could not investigate every death in the city during the Blitz, Dobkin strangled his wife, burying her under the ruins left by Vauxhall Baptist Church.
Her body was not found until May 1942 – over a year after the Blitz had ended – and police became suspicious, beginning a murder hunt when a pathologist found a broken bone in her throat.
Dobkin had covered his wife’s body in builders’ lime, believing it would help get rid of evidence of his crime. But unlike quicklime, which destroys corpses, builders’ lime actually helped to preserve her body. Brought before the courts, Dobkin’s fate was sealed quickly when a jury took just 20 minutes to convict him of murder, and he was hanged shortly afterwards in Wandsworth Prison.
Looters thrived during the Blitz, using air-raid wardens’ armbands as cover to break into houses and often calling on the help of innocent bystanders to load their ill-gotten gains on to trucks.
In the first two months nearly 400 cases were reported, and many more were not because the victims had died in the raids. In November 1940, 20 people were tried at the Old Bailey, including 10 auxiliary firemen. In all, 4,500 looters were prosecuted that year alone in London.
In Elephant and Castle, the local vicar, Rev John Markham, resorted to putting a guard on bodies of those killed in the raids and had them held temporarily in his church’s crypt, lest their wallets and wedding rings be stolen.
Concerned by the robberies, the mayor of London posted notices throughout the city, warning inhabitants that looting under wartime regulations was punishable by hanging or shooting.
The Blitz made many criminals wealthy and provided some, such as gangster Billy Hilly, with the base they needed to dominate crime in the capital for years after the war. Like many others, Hilly was released from jail at the outbreak of the war. Early on in the bombing he organised heists on jewellery shops on Regent Street before he profited substantially from the black market.
Mad Frankie Fraser, who later acted as the enforcer for the Kray Twins in the East End and is still telling his tales of gangland today, was another to learn his trade during the bombings: “The war was the most exciting and profitable time there’s ever been . . . It breaks my heart to think that Hitler surrendered, because the war was a criminal’s paradise,” he told a TV documentary-maker last month.
Thousands of homes in London were destroyed or damaged in the nightly attacks, though the compensation scheme set up to help – which offered a £500 advance to those whose homes were completely uninhabitable, along with £50 for furniture and £20 for lost clothing – was quickly exploited as the National Assistance Office struggled to keep up with the paperwork.
By 1941, the authorities knew they had been conned by many, and extra staff were drafted in to recheck the files.
One miscreant, Walter Handy, was later jailed for claiming to have been bombed out 19 times in five months.
Even children offered opportunities for gain. Tens of thousands were evacuated out of London and other major cities to live with families in rural districts, who were paid 10 shillings. There was a further six old pence for the first child they took, and eight shillings and sixpence each for any more.
When the Blitz ended, most of the children returned home, but some families continued to try and claim the allowances, or else stole forms to claim for children who never existed.
In the Tube, gangs of delinquents were blamed for robbing people as they slept, and so many were arrested that the remand homes were overcrowded by February 1941.
The clergy fretted about beating Hitler and winning a place in the life hereafter. In a newspaper article, Archbishop William Temple paid tribute to “the endurance, mutual helpfulness, and constancy” shown by most during the Blitz.
However, he went on: “People are not conscious of injuring the war effort by dishonesty or by sexual indulgence. There is a danger that we may win the war and be unfit to use the victory.”
Sometimes, though, the law proved to be an ass. In one case, rescuers dug bravely in a ruined pub in search of the dead and dying. Having found a bottle of brandy, one of them passed it to his fellows. He was later given a six-month sentence, though it was overturned on appeal. Sometimes people, law-abiding in other aspects of their lives, took things because if they did not, someone else would.
